Bismillah-ir-rahman-nir-raheem, In the name of Allah (God), the Compassionate, the Merciful. Ramadan dinners is inspired by the millions of women throughout the world who tirelessly put on the equivalent of a dinner party every single night for 30 days. This is Ramadan chez nous, sharing what we eat, inspiring you and hopefully making things slightly easier.

pizza

With the days being so long I’ve been trying to make things for Iftar that aren’t so time consuming or require less washing up; anything to save time. One of the things I did before Ramadan was to make up batches of cooked beef mince with spices and then froze it. Hardly rocket science in the land of tips but it does save time. I know it doesn’t take long to cook mince but sometimes its the combination of things in a recipe that makes things more time consuming. I tried to make the mince filled with spice and not heat so that it could be adapted to make things like Bolognaise etc.

So on to last night, I decided to go with Lahmajun (Turkish pizza). I have to be very upfront and say I really don’t like keema pizza and while in some parts of the world the keema pizza has a cult status I am firmly not a fan. To a certain extent while this does sound like keema pizza the end result was nothing like it. Tradionally the raw mince is spiced and then mixed with finely ground peppers. Generally people don’t put cheese on this which is why I think was willing to give it a go. As my objective was to save time I used a shop bought pizza dough and used my pre cooked mince (now defrosted) mixed with finely chopped peppers (done in a food processor) and fresh corriander. You need a ratio of 50:50 for the mince to peppers. The addition of the peppers makes the mince a lot lighter.

Simply roll out your dough, press on your pepper-mince mix and you are good to go! Cook the pizza according to the instructions on the dough then serve up wedges of lemon, a simple salad of onions and tomatoes. Before you eat pile on the salad and squeeze on the lemon juice! All is good!

I also made up a batch of guacamole to serve along with this as I wasn’t sure if the mince would be too dry. While it probably is extreme fusion it was a perfect accompaniment to the meal as there was none left! Enjoy!